Fairfax & Pinthis

In a fog which last week shrouded the Atlantic seaboard, the 5,600-ton packet

Fairfax of Merchants & Miners Transportation Co. groped out of Boston Harbor, Baltimore-bound. Turning down the coast past Scituate, Mass., she quickened her pace. Just at dusk her 76 passengers, including Vice President D. R. McNeil of the company, and the crew of 80, felt her swerve, stagger. Rushing on deck they saw a horrifying fiery geyser -- "like an umbrella of flame"; -- rise skyward at the bow, found themselves enveloped in it. Their vessel had rammed 504,000 gal. of hightest gasoline, cargo of the Pinthis, owned by Lake Tankers Corp. (Mallory Lines subsidiary). For a roaring moment the two craft locked, then the Pinthis sank with her crew of 18. The Fairfax was doused in flame. Human torches rushed about, dove vainly for relief into the blazing sea. Down came the lifeboats, their ropes burned away; down came the radio antenna, before an SOS was sounded. On the top deck Mrs. Neil A. Dayton, Wartime Red Cross nurse in the Army service, wife of the director of Massachusetts' Department of Mental Diseases, breathed hot fumes, fell prostrate. When revived, she tried to escape by swinging over the side to the deck below. The hot rail seared her hands. "Just as she let go," said a letter from her husband last week. ". . . [a Negro named] Redmond grasped her by the ankles and she fell downward, striking against the steel plates . . . with terrific force. . . . Although the shock nearly dragged him [Redmond] overboard, he was pulled back by two of his companions." (Seaman J. W. Walker caught a stout lady, had no quickwitted companions, perished). Bruised and scorched though she was, Mrs. Dayton joined Ship's Nurse Dorothy Mannix in treating the wounded, many of whom died in her arms from lung burns or ghastly body burns. Vice President McNeil said to Mrs. Dayton: "You are the heroine of this disaster. We will never forget what you have done. You will hear from us later."

Other women aboard the flaming Fairfax congregated astern. Some prayed, some sang the University of Maine's "Stein Song."* Finally the holocaust was quenched, the radio repaired, help obtained from S.S. Gloucester of the same line, which hurried passengers to Boston hospitals. Leaving a pool of fire fed for hours by the submerged Pinthis, the Fairfax limped in under her own steam.

At the investigation by Federal steamboat inspectors, cowardice was charged on the part of the crew, negligence on the part of Capt. Archibald H. Brooks and Chief Wireless Operator J. Wesley Geweken. Chief Signalman George Farrell of the Navy's airplane carrier Lexington, member of a group of sailors and marines returning to Norfolk from leave, said: "All members of the crew seemed to lose their heads. . . . Navy men aboard manned the hoseline and extinguished the fire." Also, when the repaired radio worked, Operator Geweken sent no more SOS calls, refused aid from the Coast Guard cutter Tampa, 15 min. away, communicated only with the Gloucester, four hours away. Testimony showed that many of the Pinthis crew were not burned but drowned. Captain Brooks said the Tampa would have been of no use: "The sea was on fire for a mile around." He also said: "I never saw a cooler crew in my life."

*In the Titanic disaster, helpless passengers sang "Nearer My God to Thee."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.